Nothing Left But Pain
by eve997
Summary: The Eleventh Doctor looks back on his life and all the people he has hurt. WARNING: CONTAINS SELF-HARM AND SELF-WORTHLESSNESS. RATED 'M' FOR A REASON.


**WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE TRIGGERS FOR SELF-HARM AND/OR SELF-WORTHLESSNESS**

* * *

Pain. That's all he wanted right now. All he needed. He needed to forget about everything – all the people he had hurt and lost and killed; the people he'd sacrificed for his own selfish cause; the people who hated him for exploiting and taking advantage of them. How many were there? How many had he corrupted and broken? How many more would there be? He looked at the gleaming knife in his hand, and brought it slowly to his wrist. He let his mind wander – a very, very dangerous thing to do.

_Slice._  
His eyes slid shut as the sweet pain traveled up his arm, reverberating throughout his body.

_Amy and Rory._ They were the first to come to mind. The two most wonderful people he had ever met; made perfectly for each other and no one else. Until he destroyed them. He was the reason for all their pain and suffering, anger and doubt. They deserved a better life – one without him there to disrupt it. He expected them to be willing and ready whenever he came; completely at his whim and not giving a damn about their personal lives. And in the end, he was responsible for their deaths.

_Slice._  
Another cut, parallel to the previous one, sending sweet pain to overflow his senses.

_River._ Her face appeared next in the sea of the damned. His wife; the woman who would give anything for him and all he did was hurt her. Accuse her for the wrongs that were really of his doing. He blamed her for nearly everything he couldn't control. And why? Because she was just like him. He would never admit it to himself, but deep down he regarded her with such scorn; accusations that she didn't deserve. He only did this because he saw himself in her; but minus his selfishness. All the things he did wrong were directed at her. It was the only way he could see what a truly terrible person he was – through the person most like himself.

_Slice._  
His eyes rolled back and he exhaled deeply, relishing in the feel of steel embedded within his flesh.

_Donna._ The feisty redhead who had traveled with his Tenth incarnation. His best friend; the only one in nine-hundred and seven years who could put him in his place. And he exploited her. Made her think that he was travelling for her instead of himself. He could never face it, but Donna was just an experiment – a way to forget about what pain he'd caused just so recently before. With her, he forced himself to forget about the person he was. She was only a distraction from the horrible truth. And by the end, he destroyed her, too. He'd implanted it in her mind that he was the hero just because he went around saving people. He'd caused her to fight for him; a battle that could never be won. Her head was bursting with the knowledge of a Time Lord. He could still remember every detail of her tear-stained face, trying desperately to push him away when he erased her memory. And then abandoning her because he couldn't stand to look at her knowing what he'd done.

_Slice._  
With each slow, sharp cut, he forced more and more of his memories away, burying them deeper in his mind.

_Martha._ The smart, spunky medical student who fancied him. He picked her up right off the bat, seducing and swaying her because he was lonely and needed someone to travel with. That first kiss could have easily been avoided, but he wanted to give her a reason to come with him. He led her into believing that she had a chance with the man of her dreams, when in reality all he wanted was someone to impress. And then, in the Year That Wasn't, he had caused for the entire universe to be in danger. He was the reason for her family's imprisonment and torture. He made her travel the world for three-hundred and sixty-five agonizing days – because he expected it from her. He expected the universe to fall to their knees before him and his noble cause, but all he did was trick and fool them. In the end, Martha turned out to be the smart one. She realized what a monster he was and decided to get out before he could destroy her along with the rest.

_Slice._  
All he ever wanted to feel was the pain. No other emotions to hold him down.

_Jack._ The immortal ex-time agent from the fifty-first century. The human who could never die. The very thought of him was repulsive. He regarded him with scorn and fear and disgust. Left him on Satellite Five to fend for himself after he had realized what Jack had become. He fled in fear, without a word of goodbye. And again, in the Year That Wasn't, he allowed Jack to be tortured, brutally beaten and killed countless times. But he never once blamed himself. He blamed Jack every time he took that first breath of life, wishing with all his heart that maybe, just once, he wouldn't wake up.

_Slice._  
His entire arm was on fire now, and he could feel the sticky wetness running down along his flesh.

_Rose._ The innocent nineteen-year-old he'd bribed and goaded to come along with him. At his first offer, she had refused – and rightfully so. But he just couldn't accept the fact that someone wouldn't want to travel with him, and he went back, seducing her with promises of space and time travel. He'd been the reason for her countless near-death experiences. On their very first trip, he had taken her to watch her planet burn. He wanted her to feel what he felt when he destroyed his people. He had tricked her so any times, making her love him when he could never truly love another. He trapped her in a parallel world, not once but twice. The first time he told himself there was nothing he could do; but in reality there had been – and still were – countless scenarios playing through his head where he could've saved her, but he had opted to take the easy way out. The second time, he had practically forced her back to the parallel world, throwing at her a clone of himself which he expected her to be happy with. He broke her too, on the beach in Bad Wolf Bay, by refusing to tell her he loved her – but at least it had been the truth.

_Slice._  
One by one, he went through the list in his head of every person he had ever wronged, hurt, betrayed, broken and scarred. After almost a hundred more cuts to his wrist, there was just one person left to put behind him.

_The Master._ The man who had been a part of his life since childhood. The one person he every truly loved and cared about. And he had failed him miserably. He was supposed to fix the Master. He was supposed to be his caretaker, his friend, his shoulder to lean on. But instead, time after time, he failed to do the one honest thing he had ever attempted in his life. He failed to fix the person who mattered so much to him. But even all that was false. The only reason he felt an attachment and a duty to the Master was because they were the only ones left. It could've been any one of his people, and as long as they were the last, he would've fought to keep them. And when he had refused to regenerate after the Year That Wasn't, he realized that the Master knew all along. He had figured out his game and wanted to end it. Later, when the Master was resurrected; when they were in the room with the High Council of the Time Lords; the Master had sacrificed himself for him. To save him, the only other proper Time Lord had destroyed himself because he actually cared about him. And that had hit him the hardest. He had deserved to die then, and it took all his willpower not to just conserve the Artron energy and burn up the rest of his lifespan. But he was much too selfish to allow that to happen.

_Slice…_

When the Doctor looked down at his arm for the first time, he found it almost completely unrecognizable as a part of his body. His flesh was butchered like livestock, and blood ran down his arm, dripping onto the floor and forming a pool of blood beneath him.


End file.
